Don’t be put off
by the title of this fourth and final CD in an excellent
series; it’s just a peg on which to hang the programme – a
useful peg because it gives Naxos the opportunity to use
a Hilliard miniature of Queen Elizabeth I playing the lute
on the cover. A CD wholly consisting of galliards, mostly
in minor keys, would lack variety, but the programme intersperses
examples of Dowland’s favourite dance form with transcriptions
of his own songs and those of others. Nor are all of the
galliards written according to one recipe – there’s considerable
variety among them.

I’ve given the
details above as they appear on the Naxos website, in greater
detail than the CD liner. The two are at odds in the attribution
of the catalogue number for track 5, Complaint,
which the insert states to be P60 and the website (correctly)
lists as P63. I’m indebted to Naxos for the information,
thereby saving me a visit to the British Library to check.

Some of the pieces
allude to contemporary events: Frog’s Galliard (tr.6)
may relate to the wooing of Elizabeth by the Duc d’Alençon,
to whom the queen referred as her ‘frog’. Can she excuse
my wrongs? (tr.20) seems to be connected with the Earl
of Essex, the Queen’s favourite after the death of Robert
Dudley, who was constantly provoking the queen and just
as regularly being forgiven. Loth to depart (tr.23)
may be connected with a contemporary ballad about Essex’s
expedition to quell the wild Irish, an enterprise which
ended in disaster.

The final piece, The
King of Denmark’s Galliard (tr.25) reminds us of
Dowland’s (self-imposed?) exile (as a recusant?) in Denmark,
where he hoped to obtain the royal patronage.

Interspersed with
the galliards are song settings, two of them newly worked
by Nigel North himself: track 12, based on Come again,
sweet love, and track 16 on Awake sweet love. The
latter is more elaborate than the normal arrangement, probably
by Cutting rather than Dowland himself, on the previous
track. Neither outstays its welcome; both are thoroughly
idiomatic.

I enjoyed these
song settings slightly more than the galliards, if only
for the pleasure of recognising the songs themselves, a
pleasure which would have been shared in greater measure
by Dowland’s contemporaries, to whom they would have been
very familiar.

Nigel North’s
playing throughout is as close to perfection as we’re likely
to get, not least for his ability to play so expressively
without making the extraneous noises of other lutenists. He
has recorded six of these pieces before for Linn: on A
Varietie of Lute Lessons (CKD097) he performs The
Queen’s Galliard and The King of Denmark’s Galliard;
on Go from my Window (CKD176) Lord Willoughby’s
Welcome Home, Walsingham, Loth to depart and Go
from my Window. In most cases the performances are
remarkably similar, but he now takes a little longer, especially
over The King of Denmark, Go from my Window and My
Lord Willoughby. Conversely, Loth to depart is
now a little faster than on Linn. I’m not going to try
to choose between the Linn and Naxos versions; both are
superb. The Naxos performances obviously benefit from
mature consideration, but the Linn recordings include music
by Dowland himself and other composers not contained here – see
my review of
these two recordings in the April, 2009, Download Roundup.

Julian Bream in
his early 1960s recording took just 1:06 for Queen Elizabeth’s
Galliard. (RCA 09026 61584 2, sadly no longer available). North
on Linn is a little slower (1:19) and on Naxos a little
slower still at 1:22. All three interpretations have merit;
Queen Elizabeth was not averse to the levity implied by
Bream’s tempo – the rather indecorous la Volta was
her favourite dance – but North’s latest version is certainly
more regal.

I’ve already praised
North’s playing on this Naxos series, along with other
colleagues, so highly that there’s very little to add at
this late stage other than to refer you to those reviews
(see below) and to urge you to buy the whole series; the
Bargain of the Month designation is for all of them, really,
but especially for this final programme which takes us
neatly from Queen Elizabeth’s court to that of King Christian. Finis
coronat opus.

As on the earlier
volumes, the recording is just right and North’s own notes
are excellent. Everything comes together for perfection. Just
don’t forget the Linn CDs – and how about a reissue of
Julian Bream’s Golden Age of English Lute Music as
a prelude to reissuing the whole Julian Bream Edition? The
Bowman/Spencer Dowland recording, formerly on Saga, which
I recently expressed a wish to see reissued, has been
restored by Alto, very inexpensively (ALC1048).

Review
IndexesBy
Label Select a label and
all reviews are listed in Catalogue orderBy
MasterworkLinks
from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to
the review
indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Reviews
from previous monthsJoin the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the
discs reviewed. detailsWe welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin
Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to
which you refer.